As a free-to-play game, Loadout is turning out to be quite a treat as a high-octane team-based shooter game that is both competitive and fun at the same time. Being able to create your own weapons and combinations, then testing your loadout against human and AI opponents is quite exciting, but also can soon turn intense as you get to fight against smart and experienced players with better weapons and equipment.

This is not a game that you can just play with your brain turned off as it does require thought and strategy in every single game. Designing weapons that will work well on the battlefield and doing all the things necessary to make them work as well as they ever could is easy on paper, but challenging in practice. But then again, that’s what makes this game so engaging.

Here are some of the stuff that you should read up on to become a bit better in this game.

Play It Safe

You’re no good to your team if you keep dying. If you want to win and have a high Kill/Death Ratio, then the best way is to lean how to not die. That’s how you then learn how to get those impressive kill streaks and contribute greatly to your team. Learn how to incorporate the use of cover and making yourself hard to hit during combat to not die so much.

In the various gameplay modes that you can play in Loadout, they punish death by delaying your respawn. That means your team’s strength is reduced by at least 25% while you’re dead, which is a disaster in Blitz. If you die in Death Snatch, then the enemy team can get your blutonium vial and score, effectively feeding them. In Jackhammer, you’d want to stay alive while carrying the hammer to your base in order to score.

Victory in Loadout relies on your ability to survive amidst heavy fire and pressure, so practice towards the goal of dying less often.

Keep Rolling

This defensive maneuver should never be underestimated as it is one of the most important things in the game. Rolling shrinks your hit box, so you are definitely harder to hit by doing so. Just make sure that you don’t roll ALL the time though since rolling effectively holsters your weapons during its animation cycle, so you won’t be able to shoot while doing it. Make it more as an escape move in order to not get hit as much.

Also, you can put out fires by rolling. You also have to practice rolling reflexively when you are hit by a Pyro weapon as it lets you put the fire out. If you don’t roll to put it out, then it will whittle your health away and eventually kill you if you’re that close enough to death, as well as make you take more damage while lit up. One roll doesn’t put it out immediately though, but merely decreases the duration of the effect, so you’ll have to roll a few times to put it out.

Jump as You Roll for Double Height

You’ll notice as you play more Loadout that jumping is not just a way to get from one place to another in the game, but also an integral part of combat itself. If you don’t have Jump Boots yet, there’s still a way to jump higher when needed. When you execute a roll, immediately press jump to do a double jump of sorts. This can be applied to various situations, both offensively and defensively.

Since you’ll have to get used to rolling anyway, jumping this way should then be part of your practice as well. With continued use, you’ll soon get the timing and rhythm of this technique under the stress of combat.

Get Shields ASAP

When you’ve encounter opponents with shields in the game, you’ll notice just how much harder they are to kill. This shows just how effective shields are at making players more impervious to damage, and you should have one as well. As soon as you can afford it, unlock Shields in the Tech Tree under Equipment for 3800 Blutes so that you can become less susceptible to otherwise preventable deaths.

Tesla as Main, Pyro as Secondary

Other players would be following the previous tip, and you’ll notice that shields do indeed increase survivability in combat. Before you start shouting that they’re overpowered, they actually aren’t as Tesla payload is very good at eating through shields. Most players are so astounded by the sheer power of Pyro payload that they just put it on all their weapons, which is not advisable.

The best way to go about this is to arm a Tesla weapon as your main to kill the shields of your opponents right away, then finish them off with your secondary when they’re most vulnerable.

Save for Jump Boots

As stated in the very first pro tip, jumping is very important in the game and getting more height out of your jump is crucial. But once you get Jump Boots, your capacity for offense increases dramatically and you can potentially increase your Kill/Death Ratio by just having them. You can unlock Jump Boots in the Tech Tree, coming just after Shields.

They make you more evasive since players with normal jump heights can’t catch up, and you can then aim down on them and take them out. You can also aim where you were standing with rockets and avoid being hurt by your own splash damage; this is a surprisingly good way to kill opponents quickly. Jumping really high makes for easier aiming as elevation, even if momentary, is a huge advantage in this game.

NOTE: You can only select one equipment at a time for each loadout, so you have to pick either Shields or Jump Boots. However, you have to unlock Shields first in order to get Jump Boots, so it’s not like you’re making a mistake if you prefer Jump Boots, yet took Shields first.

Test Weapons Often

You’ll never know what works best for you if you don’t see for yourself what various weapon configurations do. Experiment whenever you can as even components that you have not bought yet can be tested as well, so long as they have been unlocked already.

Once you do have the weapon of your dreams, you may want to stick with it though as you’d want to level up its components to make the weapon much stronger later on. But you can still play around with designs in the Testing Area to learn more about what’s possible in the game.

Practice in Testing Area

If you ever encounter really good players in Loadout, don’t just jump to the conclusion that their using aimbot because there are plenty of people who have been gaming for a very long time and would be very good with their mouse accuracy. This can only be achieved through tons of practice, which can also be done in plenty of other FPS these days like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, and so on. If you just play Loadout, then you can at least make good use of the Testing Area as it is not just for testing your weapons, but also for practicing your movement and aim.

Shooting while standing still is simple enough, but Loadout demands a lot of movement to avoid getting hit, especially since this game features a lot of splash damage. You’d want to be able to hit your opponents while making really crazy movements. Try practicing circle strafing, jump firing, and so on. Get used to your weapon’s dynamics in the stress of combat so that they’ll be most effective when you’re fighting it out.

Consider Being a Medic

Loadout is not a 1v1 game, so it’s all about the team dynamic. Unless you are playing with friends and are able to directly communicate with them during the game, then you won’t have much in the way of advanced teamwork strategies that can be employed. Most of the time, you’ll have to go by fundamentals like in most other team-based shooters such as sticking with your teammates and not letting yourself become a feeder. If you want to be more helpful though, yet your skills are not that up to par, then perhaps you’d want to arm yourself with something that shoots Health payload.

You can be beneficial to your team even if your accuracy isn’t very good as long as you support your teammates by healing them as they fight. As long as you can stay alive while the fight is going on and keep pouring on the heal, then your teammates will thank you for being there, even if you don’t get kills or captures. If you want to do even more supporting, then you may even use a gun that has The Juice payload to buff your teammates as well.

Don’t Stop Having Fun

The developers are doing quite well in patching things up (they even fixed the bug that yours truly had reported), and players have been having fun with the game so far. That’s the key in getting deep into this game since no game can ever be engaging unless it’s fun for the people playing it, and Loadout is no different. Play around with various weapon configurations, get together with some friends for a few sessions, and really get into the spirit of this game.

If you’re inclined to do so and have some money to spare, you may buy some Spacebux for some XP/Blute boosts and cosmetic upgrades to spruce up your character and support the developers. If you don’t want to pay anything, then you don’t have to as it’s free-to-play and there is no pay-to-win option. There’s also an online community of Loadout players that can help you with problems and give you advice on what to do in the game, so loosen up a bit and enjoy your stay.